Chapter 31
To War
All things must pass . . .
loves, lives and innocence.
Ralph studied the narrow valley mouth with no little anxiety. Though less than a furlong from one steep-sided wall to the other, it didn’t appear at all narrow when considered in terms of keeping a determined enemy bottled up and at bay with only two hundred and sixty-three soldiers, not all of whom were in their prime.
Each of you must think in terms of having only six feet of ground to defend, Birin had told them, before they had stretched themselves, fingertip to fingertip, in three lines ten feet apart, across the mouth of the valley. It sounded all very good in theory, but reality, as usual, bore little resemblance to wishful thinking. The instant they lowered their arms, when that tenuous but reassuring contact was broken between outstretched fingertips, the defenders were automatically hit by the realization that six feet of open ground lay to either side of each of them, that the imaginary divide between their positions vanished from perception altogether.
Ralph felt his confidence turn to an ugly knot in the pit of his stomach, even as the yawning divide opened between himself and his lateral companions, neither of whom he knew. The most daunting realization was that, while a soldier armed with a sword needed room to swing his weapon, without interfering with his fellows on either side, he could only defend one side of his position or the other. The second and third lines were there to contend with any Goblins who managed to make it past the first line of defence, and to shore up the gaps left by fallen defenders, but they, too, were subject to the same limitations. This raised the hideously plausible prospect of the enemy assaulting their position en masse, causing each individual defender to strike out to the right or left, while on the undefended side the enemy would slip through as easily as though their wall of soldiers were nothing more than a widely spaced line of wooden pickets. Should this come to pass, their two lines would more resemble a sieve than a wall.